Heavy legal guns ask judge to reverse Wikileaks shutdown

A collection of public interest groups has attempted to intervene in the …

About two weeks ago, a Swiss wealth management firm filed suit in a federal court to have the Wikileaks site shut down. The judge went along, entering a temporary restraining order that ordered the site's domain registrar to eliminate the record for Wikileaks. It was perhaps the most ineffective court order in recent memory, given that Wikileaks entries exist in many national top-level domains, and the site was still being served from its numerical IP address.

Its ineffectiveness, however, may be the least of its problems. A hearing on the renewal of the restraining order is scheduled for Friday, and the EFF, ACLU, and Project on Government Oversight have joined forces to file a request to intervene in the case. Their argument is that it violates the constitutional rights of a broad swath of the public. "The public has a right to receive information and ideas, especially ones concerning the public interest," stated Aden Fine of the ACLU. "This injunction ignores that vital First Amendment principle."

Further arguments focused on the fact that taking down an entire site to protect a small fraction of the material it hosted was a gross overreaction. In a statement, EFF attorney Matt Zimmerman noted, "The First Amendment rights of readers who have a legitimate interest in the materials posted on the website simply cannot be treated as acceptable collateral damage to the bank's claims."

Steve Mayer, one of the pro bono lawyers involved, phrased it more colloquially: "The Supreme Court has warned against 'burning down the house to roast the pig.'"

Public Citizen and the California First Amendment Coalition filed a separate brief (PDF), arguing that the whole issue is moot. In their view, the court had no jurisdiction to intervene in what's essentially a legal disagreement between a Swiss bank and its Swiss employee. Their brief also argues that the case is unlikely to succeed on its merits, so the injunction should not remain in place.

All these efforts were supported by a friend of the court brief signed by both corporate and public media organizations that include the Los Angeles Times, the Hearst Corporation, Gannett, the Associated Press, Scripps, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Citizen Media Law Project.

It's pretty clear that the initial court order was quite broad, given that the disputed documents represent a small subset of the content at Wikileaks. The clumsy silencing of the site clearly had wider implications, and those have attracted some heavy legal guns to the fight. While everyone waits for Friday's hearing to address them, Wikileaks continues to serve content.